From Bmore to BA

I hate that we have to meet like this, but it couldn’t be avoided. I should be posting alot more and I know I’ve been a bad boy, but the truth is this:

1. No matter how hard you try, the Man always wins - which means now that I’m the consummate American office jockey, I no longer have the luxury, nor the energy, to stay up till 3 am or while away the afternoon lost in daydreams of grilled meat and exotic women cooing my name.
2. Like I just mentioned, I’m just a regular working stiff; I doubt anybody really cares to hear harrowing accounts of double-sided copying and paralyzing computer malfunctions. Besides, there’s nothing I could say that that Dilbert hasn’t already.

The other day I was casually checking this blog and I noticed that my most recent post was missing. Apparently the bootsNall server (the kind people who publish all my fanciful blather) broke down a week ago, wreaking total havoc on its own homegrown blogosphere. Fortunately I got off easy with just one post deleted - which was re-typed a few hours ago…but, according to bootsNall, when the hard drive wiped out in some cases it took entire blogs along with it. That stings. Which reminds me - I better make like Juvenile and back this thing up.

I still plan on posting and droppin’ some more knowledge on ya’ll, but the longer I’m away from Argentina, the closer my mind drifts to the current state of affairs. That’s not to say I haven’t anything interesting to comment on - just that possible topics to be broached may take on a less exciting tone. For example, in Argentina I was one of the few men of my generation living alone, and I was living in what is arguably the city’s most happening neighborhood. Now I go to sleep next to a bookcase stocked with Judy Blume and wake up being harangued to clean my room. Things have changed. At any rate, if you can weather the storm and bare with me for the time being, this will eventually morph back into original form as a travel blog after I take off on my next Latin American adventure to Mexico.

Saludos! Viva Mexico! Viva la revolucion! (Damn it feels good saying that)

In [this country], red lights come in many varieties. A rare few actually mean stop. Others, to the driver, suggest different interpretations. At a pedestrian crossing at 7 a.m., with no pedestrians around, it is a “negotiable red,” more like a weak orange. At a traffic intersection, red could mean…full red, but it might, with no cars coming, be more of a suggestion than a command. It all depends.

“Obedience is boring. We want to think about it. We want to decide whether a particular law applies to our specific case. In that place, at that time.” This principle applies to traffic regulations, taxes, solemn laws and personal behavior. Everything is personal and open to discussion.

“Controllers and controlled have an unspoken agreement,” Mr. Severgnini writes. “You don’t change, we don’t change, and [the country] doesn’t change, but we all complain that we can’t go on like this.”

The above passages were taken from a recent book review in the New York Times. In this book, “La Bella Figura,” a local journalist tackles some of the idiosyncracies that he feels are most emblematic of his country. Do the descriptions remind you of anywhere?

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Editor's note: As I write this I'm sipping on a glass of Fernet Branca, Argentina's most popular liquor (nevermind that it's Italian - the only other factory in the world lies in the Buenos Aires province) I arrived back ... [Continue reading this entry]